So as you probably noticed this blog just tailed off in to nowhere last summer! Well don’t worry – I did make it out to the monkeys and I made it back too! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to update the blog from the field site though as the signal just wasn’t strong enough. I had so much I wanted to tell you all and thought I’d write all about it when I got back but… well.. suddenly it’s May and I haven’t! Oh dear! 🙂

But some exciting things have been happening. I’m delighted to be involved with the fantastic new project – Wildlife Aid Education. It’s a completely free, easy-to-access, curriculum-based teaching and learning resource for teachers, parents and children, provided by The Wildlife Aid Foundation. Check it out here and watch this space for more info in the not too distant future!

I also had the pleasure about a month ago of being asked to visit a local primary school and talk about my work with the monkeys. I was asked by one of the mum’s to come and speak to the year 6 classes, as they were in the midst of a project all about Rainforests. She thought some first hand tales of the rainforest might inspire them. I jumped at the chance!

So just before the end of last term I headed down with my laptop in tow and talked to a load of ten – eleven year olds all about what I do.

I had such fun and the children were amazing. So well behaved, articulate, enthusiastic and interested. They patiently listened to my tales of monkeys and forests, and gruesome details about the spiky plants, painful insect bites and toilet and shower facilities out there (or lack of!!) .

They came up with some brilliant questions – including the obvious ones about what the most DANGEROUS animal I’d come in to contact in the forest was! 🙂 But also some really insightful questions and comments about conservation and wildlife. It’s thoroughly restored my faith in the younger generation.

I talked to them about how I got in to this wildlife malarkey and how they can start doing things locally if that is what they are interested in. A few of them came up to me afterwards and said they wanted to work in conservation and wildlife so I hope I was able to inspire them. They wrote a very sweet overview of the session in their newsletter too.

I’m looking forward to doing more of this – it’s so lovely to talk about what I do to such an interested and enthusiastic audience. So watch this space!

Every one assumes that monkeys or apes coming in to farmers’ fields and taking crops is automatically a bad thing.. but my research in Indonesia has thrown up some interesting perspectives on crop raiding from local farmers and it looks like it’s happening in other parts of the world too.

On the island of Buton farmers often tell me that they are happy when the monkeys raid their cashew crops – why? Because it means they don’t have to climb up the trees to harvest the nuts themselves. When the monkeys raid the trees they only take the fruit. The nut is held in a little capsule beneath the fruit so when the monkeys remove the fruit to eat it they discard the nut in it’s case. It then falls to the ground and can be collected by the farmers. All the farmers need to do is keep the area beneath the trees clear from too many shrubs and weeds and then they can simply scoop up the nuts, saving hours. The nuts are protected so are not damaged in the process. It’s a win-win situation! Monkeys get food, farmers get free labour!

Read more about the Buton macaques in one of my posts from when I was out in Indonesia this summer here: “Nuts to the monkeys”

Some work over in Guinea-Bissau has shown a similar pattern with Chimps. In a similar way to the Buton macaque, the chimps only raid the fruit, leaving the nut for the farmers to harvest, in fact reportedly the chimps actually pile the nuts – which makes it even easier still!

Just goes to show how humans and wildlife can co-exist in even the most unlikely of scenarios!

The Grand Raffle Draw took place Thursday morning at the Pavilion cafe. Tickets were drawn by the Pavilion’s manager Christine Hamilton in front of a packed crowd (well ok, not exactly packed but there were a few people there – thank you Niky, Anshu, Natacha and Preeya 😉 ).

Thank you so much to everyone who bought tickets, to the Pavilion for all their support and to Sara Smith from Tranquil Harmony and Trish Hawkins from Cloud Cocoland for the prize donations. Finally, congratulations to the winners. I will arrange with you about how best to get your prizes to you!

I’ll be updating this site with my final fundraising amount in the next few days once I’ve counted it all up 🙂

I’m still running the raffle to raise the final bit of funds I need for the project this summer. So if you haven’t already then please buy some raffle tickets and help me save the buton macaque 🙂 The draw will be on 7th June so there’s still time to get some tickets!

So those who came to the bake sale already know about this but in case anyone else is interested… I’m running a raffle to raise the final bit of funds I need for the project this summer. So if you haven’t already then please buy some raffle tickets and help me save the buton macaque 🙂

The bake sale I held on 26th April went really well – I sold about 95% of the cakes I had there. The total so far for the bake sale and raffle tickets I sold on the day is about £550!! This is incredible and I just can’t believe it! I expected to maybe raise a few hundred but not this – just amazing, thank you! You guys clearly like cakes ! 😉

Thank you SO much to everyone who came down to support me and an extra big thank you to my mum, Ann Priston, my Nan, and my lovely friends Anshu Mehta, Niky Riley, Tina Little, Colette Pienaar, Zena Deane, Melanie Hammond (and her two wonderful daughters Jasmine and Layla), Anna Stringer, Tracy Hansford, Preeya and Hilary Keale for the amazing baked donations – I really couldn’t have done it without you all and I am so grateful! you guys can call in the favours from me for this for a LONG time! 🙂

Milo the giant monkey toy went down a storm with the kids and the cakes seemed to go down well with everyone 🙂

One final thank you again to the Richard and the Pavilion club for letting me do this bake sale and a particular thanks to Christine who helped get this arranged for me. Given that I was competing with their own cafe this was extremely kind of them so big thanks 🙂

Well I did it! On Saturday I cycled from Hampton Court to Brighton, in my monkey suit!

This is a bit of a long post but please bear with me. I wanted to firstly thank EVERYONE who has supported me – both in terms of sponsorship and moral support. I’d like to say a massive thank you to my mum, Dr Ann Priston for all her help and support leading up to the ride and for manning my support car on the day! I couldn’t have done it without her and I think the whole experience was probably worse for her than it was for me, so thank you! 🙂 Secondly I would like to show everyone excerpts from the ride so you can all see that I did it, in the furry suit! I’ve been so touched by everyone’s kindness and generosity and I really can’t thank you all enough. A big thank you to the Pavilion Club too for allowing me to set off from their carpark and for all their support.

So far I’ve raised an amazing £855.80! I can’t believe it – thank you so much to everyone who has donated so far. If anyone was waiting for me to complete the cycle before sponsoring me then you can still sponsor me here 🙂 I’m still a way off from my total goal of £1500 so any donations are always welcome.

Now for the gruesome details of the day!

Here’s a map of my route:

You can see the full route in detail (downloadable if anyone wants to repeat this journey!), with photos at various points on my mapmyride site here (zoom in and click on the little camera icon to see photos of the route)

And here’s a little graph of the gradients and all the hills I peddled up! No wonder my legs are sore 😉

I set off from the Pavilion carpark at about 11:30, loads of people came down to see me off which was such a fab way to start.

furred and suited and ready to go!

I peddled off out of the carpark and off towards Thames Ditton. I won’t lie – as I left the carpark in the overcast, damp weather I was begining to wonder what on earth I’d let myself in for!

After a slightly damp ride through Tolworth and Ewell (where I picked up a fellow cycler who cycled with me for a mile or so) I pushed my way up Banstead hill, past the station and made it to my first pit stop – a quick Jelly Tot refuel at mile 10!

Jelly tot stop number 1 at the 10 mile mark!

I only stopped for a few minutes and then pressed on. The next section of the ride was a mix of ups and downs, with a few big hills. I’d been in need of a loo break since about mile 4 so we’d agreed to try to stop somewhere. I peddled past quite a few pubs and a starbucks and was sure mum would have stopped the car at one of them but I checked every car park as I went past and didn’t see it. So I decided to cycle on – down a slightly hairy sliproad that nearly took me on to the M25 (thanks to a really stupid cycle path layout!) and then on, under the M25 down the A23 towards, and under, the M23. By mile 25 I still hadn’t seen the car so I stopped and gave them a ring. It turned out they were about 10 miles behind me after stopping in a pub to wait for me. It seems they slightly underestimated my speed!

Riding up Turner's Hill for the next protein bar stop at mile 25

We managed to meet up with each other again at mile 25 at the top of Turner’s Hill for another refuel with a protein bar, some jelly tots and a refill of the water bottle!

Setting off again from Turner's Hill

I then set off again through some lovely countryside – some ups, some downs (really the South Downs should be renamed the South Ups to be honest!), and some great wildlife. In fact I was so busy looking at the baby bunnies, sparrowhawks and deer as I whizzed past that I managed to miss one of my key turnings in the village of Ardingley and took a slight detour of a couple of miles through the delightful village of Lindfield! The wind and rain picked up at this point of the ride (as you’ll see from the vid below with my billowing monkey outfit!) but the scenery kept me going, as did the beeps from motorists (which I hope were beeps of support rather than annoyance ;)) and some really encouraging words from fellow cyclists and walkers on the route 🙂

By this point I was cold, damp and pretty tired. My hip flexors were sore and my knees were starting to ache. I was actually grateful for the monkey suit as it did at least keep me a bit warm, but everytime I stopped I got cold pretty quickly so I tried to keep any stops to a minimum. Onwards and upwards (or downwards!) through Wivelsfield…

After this there was time for one final stop for me to psyche myself up for the final big hill – Ditchling Beacon. Although I knew it was quite a climb I hadn’t fully prepared myself for it and when I first caught sight of it as I came down Beacon Road it loomed up ahead like a solid wall! More of a mountain than a hill 😉

The moment I caught sight of the hill....

I made it up though – I put my bike into the lowest gear and just kept peddling. I managed not to stop and aside from some slightly hairy close calls with passing cars I got to the top unscathed, though it was lucky no one could hear me on the way up – the air was a teeny bit blue as I huffed and puffed my way to the top!

At the top of Ditchling Beacon! 🙂

I spent about 5 mins catching my breath and taking in the view at the top and then decided to head off before I got too cold. Then it was plain sailing for the last 6 miles! Mostly downhill from here in to Brighton, so it was bike in to top gear and then I was a super speedy monkey all the way in to Brighton – top speed 31 mph – wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee! 🙂 Some fantastic views of Brighton and the coast on the way down but I didn’t want to stop to take photos – was just too excited to be finishing!

Finished! Total time 4 hrs 49 mins including stops, 3hrs 49 mins of actual cycling time and 5hrs 18 if we include the bits where I had to wait for the support car! lol! Either way I’m super chuffed. I was expecting 5 – 6 hrs or more given the conditions, and as I’ve never cycled further than 10 miles in one go and only got the bike 2 weeks ago I think it’s pretty good! 🙂

The FINISH!

Final chance for some photos on the beach before I got out of the monkey suit and into some dry clothes!